Global Climate News: July 1-2
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Reducing Emissions
Marine Transport
Canada has announced a ban on the use of Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) by vessels in the Artic, effective July 1, 2024. The ban mainly affects cargo carriers. All double-hulled ships (all passenger ships are double-hulled) are exempt from the ban until July 1, 2029. Some community-supply ships can apply for a waiver.
Aluminium Smelting
Aluminium ore contains the metal in oxide form. To obtain metal, the ore is subjected to electrocatalysis using carbon anodes. Oxygen from the ore combines with carbon from the anode to produce CO2, and pure metal is obtained at the cathode. This is an important industrial process and a large contributor to global GHG emissions - emitting nearly 270 million tonnes of CO2 in 2022.
Global mining giant, Rio Tinto, along with US-based Alcoa, has developed proprietary non-carbon anodes for this process that will not get consumed in the reaction, releasing oxygen rather than CO2 during the electrocatalysis. The technology, termed ELYSIS, can be used in new aluminium smelting installations, as well retrofitted in existing smelters. The two companies are setting up a demonstration plant using ELYSIS in Québec (Canada).
Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets (VCMs)
VCMs allow companies to purchase credits to ‘offset’ their emissions - the proceeds of the credit sale flow to projects that remove CO2, such as planting and protecting forests, capturing CO2 directly from air and more.
Carbon removal projects can be categorised into those that
Though many large corporates have shown interest in purchasing credits and made commitments too, VCMs have a total size of only about $2 billion currently. A new report by the Climate Crisis Advisory Group identifies 3 key challenges to scaling VCMs - Accurately determining credits, Financial transparency, and Monitoring and Verification
Accurately Determining Credits
Methodologies based on scientific principles exist for determining the tons of CO2 removed by a specific carbon removal method, but there can be wide differences in credits calculated for a specific method (a credit is generated per ton of CO2 removed). For instance, for adoption of clean cookstoves there are 10 different methodologies that determine credits associated with a project by comparing efficient models with traditional models. Among these different methodologies, the exaggeration of credits can range from 1.5 to 10 times. The structure of the VCMs also incentivises exaggeration of credits.
the purchaser of carbon credits wants to offset as much as possible for the amount of money they wish to deploy, so over-stating project results aligns by making each carbon credit less expensive. Registries wants to engage with as many carbon credits as possible to enhance their own performance standing. Projects benefit from a generous assessment of impact because this draws in funding and increases the likelihood of follow-up funding, for example.
Credit calculation methodologies have been revised since investigative reporting in early 2023 found that credits associated with a large deforestation project were exaggerated by almost 90%, however, there’s still a lot of ambiguity and calculations are evolving.
Financial Transparency
Buyers of carbon credits purchase credits through registries, and registries transmit funds to project developers. Fees are also paid intermediaries, brokers and auditors at different stages. However, how much of the funds actually flow to intermediaries vs projects cannot be determined by the buyer.
There is rarely any way of knowing what proportion of a carbon credit price ultimately ends up with projects on the ground, or in supporting their evaluation, monitoring and verification.
Further, each project pays the registry a fee to list with them, creating incentives for registries to be less strict with projects.
US-based Frontier is taking an alternative route, an advance market commitment (AMC), for funding carbon removal. An AMC lets buyers commit funds upfront so that carbon removal companies know there’s a market for their solutions. The buyers specify how much they’re willing to pay every year, but payments are not linked to a specific number of credits. The goal is to fund new/early-stage solutions that have currently not reached the price per ton that will allow them to flourish in the market. For instance, the project maybe able to supply carbon removal at $300 per ton, whereas the price that will attract lots of buyers hovers around $100 per ton. Projects are funded in 2 ways - a) prepurchase contracts for low volumes of carbon credits where the provider is paid before the tons are actually delivered, and b) offtake contracts that make payments when the tons are delivered. The latter help providers secure lending and get more investors onboard. Frontier itself charges a fixed annual fee for discovering and vetting projects that it finds most promising.
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Monitoring and Verification
Once a carbon removal project begins, the actual tons of CO2 removed need to be calculated and compared to what was promised. The standards for monitoring are different among different bodies, and still evolving. Also, monitoring is costly and hard to implement.
Though nature-based carbon removal projects are both cheaper and have crucial co-benefits - improving water holding capacity, restoring soils, reducing erosion, protecting wildlife, and improving food security - there’s a risk that the cost and difficulty in monitoring these can lead buyers to preferentially fund novel carbon removal tech like direct air capture, as impact can be clearly determined for these.
But solutions are being developed for this. The Landbanking Group, based in Germany, uses a combination of satellite data, field data from public and private databases and AI models to help land owners/cultivators evaluate the impact of regenerative practices over time on soil organic carbon, nutrient retention, water holding capacity, and species diversity. Their platform, Landler.io, also allows interested buyers to directly fund land restoration initiatives and track progress through the monitoring technology developed by the company.
UK-based Silixa has developed a monitoring solution for geological storage of carbon. The company uses fiber optic cables, equipped with sensors, that are installed when storage wells are being built in the aquifer/reservoir. The sensors collect high resolution seismic and temperature data, which is used to confirm reservoir integrity before pumping CO2, and keep a check on pressure levels and any seismic changes while CO2 is injected. The technology can also be used for undersea CO2 storage.
Besides these challenges, VCM participants also need to promote durable carbon removal methods - those that will work over long periods, address leakage - when removal in one area drives up emissions in another, ensure high-quality credits take precedence, and encourage buyers to use the VCM only for offsetting ‘residual’ emissions that cannot be avoided/removed through operational improvements.
The Conversation | Climate Crisis Advisory Group - Voluntary Carbon Markets: Potential, Pitfalls, and the Path Forward
Critical Minerals and Seabed Mining
Norway passed the Seabed Minerals Act in 2019, and mapped the mineral resources in the Norwegian Continental Shelf earlier this year to identify areas for extraction. It is now holding a public consultation on the first licensing round for mineral exploration, with a target of awarding licenses in the first half of 2025.
WWF Norway is opposing the move and has initiated legal action against the government as it believes that “the strategic impact assessment by the Ministry of Energy, upon which the Government’s opening decision is based, does not meet the minimum requirements set forth in the Subsea Minerals Act, and therefore there is no legal basis for the opening decision”. Many countries (France, the UK, Denmark, Mexico) and organisations (Google, BMW, KLP) have advocated for a moratorium or ban on seabed mining. The International Seabed Authority has deferred finalising relevant regulations until 2025, after failing to reach consensus by the previous 2023 deadline.
Meanwhile, China has announced that the country’s critical mineral resources belong to the state and their development and export will be overseen by the government.
In a list released by the country's State Council on Saturday, Beijing declared that rare earth metals are the property of the state and warned "no organization or person may encroach on or destroy rare-earth resources." From Oct. 1, when the rules come into force, the government will operate a rare earth traceability database to ensure it can control the extraction, use and export of the metals. POLITICO
Synthetic fuels
Making bio-fuels through microbial fermentation
Alkenes are non-cyclic hydrocarbons that are used as feedstocks for producing a number of industrial products. For instance,
The US chemical industry produces about 25 billion kilograms of ethylene annually, more than any other synthetic organic chemical. Src
Most of the alkenes used currently are made from crude oil by steam cracking. But research has been underway for many years to make them through bio-fermentation processes.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science modified a bacterial cell to efficiently convert commonly available fatty acids, such as lauric acid (present in coconut oil and palm kernel oil), into an alkene which can be used for mixing in fuels and for industrial uses. The team engineered a protein, that when expressed in the bacteria’s membrane improved the efficiency of the fatty acid conversion to 95% and an enzyme reaction time of 40 minutes, beating previous metrics.
ET Energy | IISc Press Release | A chimeric membrane enzyme and an engineered whole-cell biocatalyst for efficient 1-alkene production, Science Advances (June, 2024)
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